Proceedings of the 9th IFAC Symposium Advances in Control

Education
The International Federation of Automatic Control
Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, June 19-21, 2012

Use of an industrial distributed control system in conjunction with

Matlab/Simulink for process control education
Rainer Dittmar

West Coast University of Applied Sciences, Heide, Germany
(Tel: +49 481 8555-325; e-mail: dittmar@fh-westkueste.de).

Abstract: The paper demonstrates how a four-tank laboratory process equipped with a modern distributed
control system (DCS) is used in different control engineering laboratories for the undergraduate and
graduate levels. This includes the utilization of commercial tools for DCS engineering as well as the
design and commissioning of traditional and advanced control solutions. Matlab/Simulink tools are
connected via OPC to extend the laboratory scope with rapid control prototyping and hardware-in-the-loop
simulation. Using the same pilot plant, DCS and scientific computing environment in different courses
lowers the costs, allows the reutilization of results and enables an efficient lab organization. It also
supports the process of learning the inner context of different process control related subjects.


1. INTRODUCTION Apart from a few exceptions, only professors do the teaching

In Germany, higher education in engineering sciences is
offered both at Technical Universities (TU) and at
Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS, in German:
Fachhochschule). Most of the UAS in West Germany have
been established around 1970 responding to new challenges
in the workplace resulting from scientific and technical
progress and pertinent new training requirements. The East
German states began establishing UAS in 1991. Austria and
Switzerland adopted this model in the 90s as well. The
educational mission and profile of UAS can be summarized
as follows (BMBF, 2003):
 close connection between theory and practice (e.g., the
vast majority of programs include a mandatory one
semester internship in industry, almost all classes include
comprehensive practical labs in addition to lectures and
exercises, Bachelor/Master Thesis works are done in
industry or in common industry/university projects)
 efficient organization of studies and examinations
leading to shorter duration of study
 application-oriented research and development,
technology and knowledge transfer to small and
medium-sized enterprises.
About two thirds of German engineers graduate from a UAS.
UAS graduates meet industry’s needs for specialists with
higher education qualifications and practically oriented
training. As a result, many companies, in recruiting
graduates, do not differentiate too much between UAS and
TU qualifications. Initial salary levels for UAS graduates are
largely the same as for TU ones. Since TU engineering
programs are research-oriented and more challenging with
regard to mathematical foundations, TU graduates will often
be employed in companies R&D groups, while UAS
graduates have a higher share in project planning and
execution, and in technical sales departments.
at UAS, including not only lectures, but also exercises and
labs. They are supported by additional instructors/assistants.
In order to be able to work at a UAS, professors must have a
doctorate degree and at least five years of career experience,
including at least three years in industry. Teaching
obligations of UAS professors amount to 18 hours/week in
the teaching periods. Professors active in research have the
option of reducing their teaching load. UAS do not offer PhD
or doctorate programs on their own, since institutional laws
pertaining to earning of doctorates are part of the core area of
TU’s autonomy. But especially qualified UAS graduates can
be admitted to doctoral studies, and an increasing number of
UAS collaborates with TU’s in PhD programs as well.
The specific characteristics of UAS engineering education
lead to a higher share of lab exercises in the general teaching
and study workload. At the same time, lab exercises are not
only oriented to reinforce learning of scientific basics, but
also to get hands-on experience and professional skills for
later employment in industry. The importance of lab
exercises (both local and remote access, real and simulated
plants) for control and instrumentation education is widely
recognised (Bencomo, 2004, Edgar et al., 2006a). An
overview of laboratory experiments and simulation examples
used in undergraduate and graduate process control education
is given in (Edgar et al., 2006a and 2006b). In (Rivera et al.,
1996), the use of a Honeywell TDC3000 DCS in conjunction
with different pilot plants in a senior-level course “Process
Dynamics and Control” at Arizona State University (ASU)
was described. At that time (e.g. mid of the 90s), the
installation at ASU could only be enabled by a more than $1
million donation from industry.
In this paper, a newly developed laboratory is described
which can repeatedly be used in different classes of control
engineering education at the undergraduate and graduate
levels. It consists of a quadruple tank laboratory process, an

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9th IFAC Symposium Advances in Control Education
Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, June 19-21, 2012
industrial-scale DCS, and a number of Matlab/Simulink
tools. Using the same pilot plant, control system and
programming environment in different modules lowers the
costs, allows the reutilization of results and enables an
efficient lab organization. It also supports the process of
learning the inner context of different process control related
subjects.
This paper is organized as follows: the pilot plant and DCS
configurations are described in Section 2. In Section 3,
selected lab exercises carried out with this equipment will be
presented which reflect the specific needs of control
education at a UAS. Section 4 presents how the scope of the
laboratory was extended with the help of Matlab/Simulink
tools connected via an OPC interface.
2. QUADRUPLE-TANK SYSTEM AND DCS
The quadruple-tank system which is used as a pilot plant in
the process control lab is shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. Quadruple-tank system at West Coast UAS Heide
It consists of a water reservoir, four cylindrically shaped
tanks, four speed-controlled pumps and five ultrasonic level
transmitters. This laboratory process has first been described
in (Johansson, 2000) and is used in a number of universities
word-wide (Vadigepalli et al., 2001, Rusli et al., 2004 and
Felder et al., 2008). In most labs, two pumps are used, and
the flow rates to tanks 1 and 2 are set by three-way valves. In
our lab (as well as at the University of Stuttgart), four pumps
are used instead, and the flow rate ratios are set by speed ratio
controllers.
In contrast to many other control labs, the plant is not
connected to a PC or PLC/PC SCADA system, but to an
industrial-scale DCS (Honeywell Experion PKS), of course
in its smallest possible configuration. The reasons for the
selection of this relatively expensive instrumentation are:
 students can get hands-on experience with a “real” DCS
as one of the most important forms of industrial-scale
control system equipment, in particular for the process
industries,
 the same equipment can be used in different laboratory
courses for different tasks, i.e. the costs are shared by a
number of labs (note that - in contrast to the ASU lab -
the cost of our DCS plus pilot plant installation is less
than 50.000 EUR).
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The structure of the DCS connected to the quadruple tank
system is shown in Fig. 2.
Fig. 2. Process control laboratory DCS structure
The distributed control system consists of a Honeywell C200
controller, an Experion PKS station and an Experion PKS
server. The EPKS station is used as the “operator” interface.
The EPKS server holds the real-time data base of the DCS
and is also used as the computer for engineering the
controller and operator station software. Both are Honeywell
certified Dell PCs running Windows 2000 SP4 as operating
system. For the connection between the C200 controller, the
station and the server, a fault tolerant Ethernet connection is
used. The server is also connected to a PC pool in another
building via the university LAN. From this pool, up to 12
students are able to engineer the system in parallel and to test
it in simulation mode. Of course, only one group at a time
may have access to the laboratory process.
3. SELECTED LAB EXERCISES AND STUDENT
PROJECTS
The Department of Electrical and Information Engineering
(EIE) offers a seven semester Bachelor program in electrical
and information engineering including a mandatory one
semester industrial internship (fifth semester). Within this
Bachelor program, starting from the fourth semester, students
can select between two profiles: Automation and Applied
Information Engineering (AAI), and Microlelectronic
Systems. In addition, the department offers a three-semester
Master program “Industrial Automation” in collaboration
with Wismar University of Technology.
The AAI path of the Bachelor program next to classes in
Signals and Systems, Process Dynamics and Control,
Computer Networks and Bus Systems, Software Engineering,
Sensors and Measurement, Power Electronics/Electrical
machines and Drives, includes a course in Industrial Control
Systems/PLCs and DCS. It is taught in the 4 th semester and
includes 3h lectures, 1h exercises and 4h lab per week.
9th IFAC Symposium Advances in Control Education
Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, June 19-21, 2012

The structure of the three semester collaborative Master training programs for engineering professionals. Students can
program “Industrial Automation” is shown in Table 1. use the comprehensive DCS user manuals. In addition, a
Additional elective courses offered include Building hand-out is provided where all steps of DCS engineering are
Automation, Modelling of Dynamic Systems, Real-Time described in detail.
Software Technology, and Enterprise Resource
Planning/Manufacturing Execution Systems. The specific tasks to be solved in the lab exercises are

Again, all mandatory courses include lab exercises or student  to design a cascade control loop including feedforward
projects, respectively. In the following subsections, examples action for a simulated industrial furnace using the CFC
for the use of the DCS/Pilot plant in a selected course of the environment (“Control Builder” in Honeywell
Bachelor and Master programs will be presented in detail. terminology)
 to develop a graphical interface to visualize and to
Table 1: Master program Industrial Automation operate the control functions using the “Graphics
(mandatory classes) Builder”
 to perform a “virtual commissioning” of the control
Winter Semester Advanced Process Control, Motion functions.
Control, Computer Networks and
A simplified P&I diagram of the process and the control
Security, Industrial Image Processing,
configuration is presented in Fig. 3. The product temperature
General Management
is controlled by the primary controller which sets the setpoint
Summer Semester Sensor Systems, Robotics, for the secondary fuel gas pressure controller. The feed flow
Microcontroller Technology, Compu- rate is considered the main measurable disturbance variable.
tational Engineering, Quality and The feedforward path is designed as a corrective action for
Project Management the pressure setpoint. Fast students can extend this problem
and replace the pressure control by a fuel gas to air flow ratio
3rd Semester Master Thesis (in industry) control structure, and/or include an exhaust gas oxygen
controller.
The furnace dynamics is simulated on the DCS itself based
on simple standard function blocks. The design of the control
3.1 Bachelor program: Industrial Control Systems/DCS
structure is based on standard library PID blocks as well.. In
course
contrast to the industrial environment, the pressure controller
output is connected with the furnace simulation and not sent
In the AAI path of the Electrical and Information Engineering
to an actuator. Similar, the pressure, temperature and flow
Bachelor program, the DCS (without the four-tank system) is
signals are taken from the simulation, and not from
used in the Industrial Control Systems/PLCs and DCS course
transmitters.
(4th semester). It is organized as a sequence of 4h lab
exercises in the computer lab every alternate week (i.e.
2h/week in average, with 14 weeks/semester), maximum
twelve students in parallel. During the same semester,
students visit a 1h/week DCS lecture. Due to the large
number of students normally taking this course, the four-tank
system is demonstrated but not used as part of the lab
exercises. The lab workload amounts to 60 hours per
semester including preparation.
The objectives of the lab are
 to help understanding the purpose, structure, properties
and engineering tools of industrial control systems used
in the process industry
 to gain experience in using the main engineering tools
such as continuous and sequential function chart
(CFC/SFC) design of typical control functions, and tools Fig. 3: Simplified P&I diagram of a furnace control problem
for operator screen design
 to give an overview of other tools used for DCS The functionality of the design can be tested by switching the
engineering such as alarm and event management, OPC Control Builder from “project view” to “monitoring view”. In
interface, management of DCS security and others. this view, it is possible to pursuit all signals in real-time.
The specific DCS used is of minor importance in this course,
since the basic principles are the same for DCSs of different For the design of the operator screen, the students use the so-
vendors, and knowledge acquired can easily be transferred to called “Graphics Builder”. Their tasks are
other systems. And of course, it cannot be the objective of  to draw the P&I diagram using the graphics library
this lab to replace Honeywell’s or other vendors’ DCS

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9th IFAC Symposium Advances in Control Education
Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, June 19-21, 2012
 to create a “dynamic shape” for the PID controller (a
typical which can be used for all PID controllers in the
project) displaying PV, SP, OP and controller mode
 to include a call of PID controller standard faceplates
generated by the DCS itself
 to include trend displays to monitor the signals
Fig. 4 presents an example of an operator screen designed by
a student group.
Fig. 4: Furnace operator screen example
The tasks to be solved are intentionally chosen to consolidate
and to deepen students’ knowledge in process dynamics and
control taught one semester earlier. In particular, practical
problems such as simple methods of process identification,
PID controller tuning, selection of the specific PID control
algorithm, controller modes and bumpless transfer are
stressed.
3.2 Master program: Advanced Process Control (APC)
course
In the Master program, the DCS is used together with the
quadruple-tank system in the “Advanced Process Control”
course. In contrast to the Bachelor program, lab exercises are
performed as student projects over the full semester, the
student groups (usually 2…4 students) are responsible for
project organization themselves. The project results are
presented by each group in a series of oral presentation
sessions at the end of the semester. Different experiences and
tasks/results can be shared since all students take part in those
sessions. The projects are different in contents but have more
or less the same size and complexity with a working load of
approximately 90h including self-study, execution of lab
work and preparation of the oral presentation.
The student projects concentrate on different approaches for
the solution of four-tank-system multivariable control
problems. In particular, the following approaches are studied:
1) Decentralized PI control for the levels in tanks 1 and 2.
This structure represents the traditional way of
381
instrumentation in the process industries, where single-loop
PID controllers are designed to control inherently
multivariable processes.
Similar to an industrial setting, the following steps have to be
executed before the controllers can be tuned:
 design of two PID loops in the Control Builder (CFC) of
the DCS using standard data acquisition and PID
function blocks
 execution of step tests for the individual loops by
manipulating the controller outputs in manual mode
 identification of simple process models (first or second
order plus deadtime) by manual techniques and/or by
using system identification packages (either Matlab
System Identification Toolbox or identification part of
model based tuning tools).
In the next steps, students may compare different approaches
to PI controller tuning, namely
 single-loop tuning without consideration of process
interactions, i.e. the two controllers are treated
independently from each other. For controller tuning,
either tuning rules or commercially available PID tuning
software may be applied.
 simultaneous or multi-loop tuning of PI controllers
taking into account the process interactions.
 averaging level control tuning.
2) Design of static or dynamic decoupling control structures.
Another student project is focused on the design of a
simplified decoupling control structure as shown in the
“inverted decoupling” version in Fig. 5 (Gagnon et al., 1998).
Fig. 5: Inverted decoupling control of the quadruple-tank
system
This approach requires the development of a (2x2) transfer
function model of the process by either experimental
identification or based on a theoretical model. The decouplers
G12 ( s) G ( s)
D12 ( s)   , D21 ( s)   21 (1)
G11 (s) G22 (s)
can be designed manually if the transfer functions are first
approximated by FOPDT models, and can then be realized
using standard software function blocks on the DCS, e.g.
using “variable dead-time lead-lag” blocks.
9th IFAC Symposium Advances in Control Education
Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, June 19-21, 2012
3) Centralized multivariable control using an MPC
controller. A third and the most challenging project is to
design and commission a multivariable model predictive
controller (MPC) for the quadruple-tank system, see Fig. 6.
The students are encouraged to use a commercial MPC
(Honeywell Profit Controller) package.
The core of any MPC controller is a multivariable process
model. In the project, students execute a series of step tests
changing the manipulated variables (pump speeds), record
the step responses of the tanks levels and use the internal
identification package of the MPC controller for system
identification. Since an empirical process model has been
developed at least once in previous projects, earlier results
can be used for validation. Then, the MPC controller is
designed and simulated in off-line mode. The last step is to
connect the MPC controller inputs and outputs to the DCS
and to test the controller in online mode. For this purpose, the
existing OPC server of the DCS and the OPC client of the
MPC package can be used. The operator interface for the
MPC controller is developed automatically during the design
phase and doesn’t require additional effort.
Fig. 6: MPC control of the quadruple-tank system
4. INTEGRATION OF EXPERION PKS AND
MATLAB/SIMULINK USING AN OPC INTERFACE
During the last decades, Matlab/Simulink and its numerous
toolboxes became the standard environment in scientific
computing in education and research. During the course of
their studies, students of the EIE Department become more
and more familiar with the use of Matlab/Simulink.
Therefore, it was an obvious consequence to integrate
Experion PKS and Matlab/Simulink tools using the OPC
interface technology. In our case, the existing Experion PKS
OPC server provides real-time access to plant data, and the
Matlab OPC toolbox can be used as OPC client to connect
different Matlab/Simulink based applications. Since
Matlab/Simulink licenses are already used for other courses,
this integration provides a cheap possibility to extend the
scope of the laboratory. The setup is presented in Fig. 7.
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Fig. 7. Integration of Experion PKS and Matlab/Simulink via
OPC interface technology
In other areas of industrial control applications (e.g.
automotive/mechatronic systems), Matlab/Simulink is
extensively used for rapid control prototyping and hardware-
in-the-loop (HIL) simulation. Using the extended
environment described above, students can be familiarized
with these concepts during their studies. For rapid control
prototyping, Matlab/Simulink is used for the development of
new algorithms, e.g. for identification, monitoring and
control, and the Experion PKS/pilot plant system is used for
testing them. For HIL simulation, control configurations and
“operator” screens can be developed on Experion PKS, and
tested by running them against Simulink based process
simulations. In the following subsections, two student
projects will be described in more detail.
4.1 Rapid Control Prototyping: Predictive Functional
Control of the four-tank system
Predictive Functional Control (PFC) is a simple model
predictive control (MPC) algorithm for SISO applications
(Richalet and O’Donovan, 2009). PFC is easy to understand,
to implement and to tune, and a candidate to replace PID
controllers for certain applications. Since it is not part of the
standard DCS control software, the aim of the project is to
develop a PFC software function block for Experion PKS.
Project steps include:
 to understand the PFC concept by programming the PFC
algorithm for a first order process with dead time, and by
testing it in closed-loop simulation in Matlab,
 to connect the Matlab PFC code with Experion PKS via
OPC toolbox commands, to run the control algorithm
against a process simulation created by DCS function
blocks
 to control a level in the four-tanks system by the Matlab
PFC code
 to develop and test a PFC custom algorithm block for the
DCS with features such as mode selection, bumpless
transfer etc.
The scope of the project can easily be extended to the
development of a graphical user interface on either the
Matlab/Simulink or the DCS side.
9th IFAC Symposium Advances in Control Education
Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, June 19-21, 2012
4.2 HIL simulation: Multi-loop PID control of a simulated
FCC unit
During the last decades, a substantial number of Matlab/
Simulink based process plant simulators for education and
research have been published. For another student project in
the APC course of the Master program, the simplified FCCU
model described in (Bequette, 2003) has been adopted. It is a
fully coupled two-input, two-output system including
nonlinearities, unusual process dynamics, large process noise,
and one order of magnitude different settling times for the
two control variables. Nevertheless, this FCCU model is
much easier to handle than a full-blown FCCU dynamic
simulator used for e.g. operator training systems.
Steps of the student project include:
 establishing and testing a connection between the
Simulink FCCU model and Experion PKS via the Matlab
OPC Toolbox/Simulink OPC blockset
 the design of the control structure with PID or Profit
Loop function blocks using the CFC environment
(Control Builder) of Experion PKS
 the identification of the multivariable (2x2) process
model using the Matlab System Identification Toolbox
 tuning the PID controllers with different multi-loop
tuning methods, and
 closed-loop simulations to analyse the response to
reference signals and load disturbances, and to study the
robustness with regard to plant-model mismatch.
As an example, Fig. 8 presents the Simulink block diagram
containing the FCCU model subsystem and OPC Toolbox
Simulink blocks for the configuration of the interface, for
reading Experion PKS PID controller output signals, and for
writing simulated process values to the DCS.
Fig. 8. Simulink block diagram for the OPC interface
between FCCU simulation and Experion PKS
5. CONCLUSION
The control laboratory experiments and projects documented
in this paper have been developed over the last four years.
Student response data for the laboratory courses was obtained
from departmental surveys administered at the end of the
semester. The results of this survey were an average score of
4.1 for the overall value of the lab courses (on a range from 1
383
= lowest rating to 5 = highest rating). Comments were given
regarding the improvement of DCS documentation. Students
have found the experience both challenging and worth-wile
for their prospective work as control engineers in industry,
and a necessary endorsement to the lectures. Based on a lot of
discussions with alumni and control engineers in industry, a
positive feedback is given to the use of industrial-scale
equipment and commercial software in UAS education. Since
a lot of graduates of the department apply for jobs in
engineering and project execution groups of the neighbouring
process industry companies and in automation engineering
offices, they valuate the control lab as a great help to easily
integrate in their later teams and to avoid the “reality shock”
when making the transition from academia to industry. In the
future, the laboratory will be modified and possibly extended
to cover requirements and additional content for continuing
control education in the process industry.
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